News of the Weird

Michael Rubin, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in personal-injury cases, filed a $2 million lawsuit in June against his neighbor, tax lawyer Kenneth Schild, whose backyard basketball playing was making too much noise. Schild said Rubin had threatened to trespass and forcibly prevent him from playing and once had squirted Schild and his son with a hose to get them to stop. Rubin's lawsuit named as defendants Schild, Schild's two kids, his lawyer, and his psychologist, and he filed separately against the maker of the backyard basketball hoop.

Latest Testosterone Surges

Howard DeYoung, owner of the Radio Shack in Dorr, Michigan, was arrested in July on charges that he had secretly videotaped his young female employees' sexual activities after encouraging them to use the store after hours for meeting their boyfriends. DeYoung was contemplating selling his store because, he said, "It's pretty hard to get somebody to come work for me right now."

A London minister and police chaplain, described by a colleague as a "gifted preacher," was sentenced to 18 months in jail in June. He was convicted of having lured young girls into posing naked for him by telling them they would be illustrating "kidnap and rescue" stories for the church magazine.

Father Mario Robert Foss, 59, director of ministries for Saint Louis University, was found dead in July, the victim of an apparent robbery in Knoxville, Tennessee. His body was found in a rental car, his pants unzipped and a large ring (the kind used to enhance sexual performance) around his scrotum.

In Pleasanton, California, a 28-year-old man was charged in March with sexually assaulting a sheep after a farmer caught him in a barn with the sheep and a tube of Vaseline. In February a 26-year-old man was arrested in Bismarck, North Dakota, and charged with an attack at the Dakota Zoo's goat barn. Earlier this year, police in San Jose, California, sought a man they believe sexually assaulted several animals, including a pig that was part of a 4-H Club fair in December.

Chutzpah

Daniel R. Wyman was found guilty of driving with a suspended license and released from the courtroom in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in February. The judge walked outside to make sure Wyman didn't try to drive away from the courthouse, which he did, whereupon the judge had him arrested again.

Glynn "Scotty" Wolfe, 81, a Baptist minister in Blythe, California, announced in July that he planned to divorce his 27th wife, Daisy, 19, after five years of marriage, in order to marry her 15-year-old sister.

Authorities at the Guilford County jail in North Carolina admitted that prisoner Robert Roy Goins was able to smuggle a .25 caliber pistol into the jail on June 30 despite having been searched twice by officers. Goins said he hid it between the cheeks of his buttocks.

Stanley Adams, unsuccessful candidate for governor in Texas this year and implicated (but not charged) by the government in a fraud conspiracy, listed his occupation in campaign filing papers as "alleged white-collar racketeer."

The Reverend W.N. Otwell, another Texas gubernatorial candidate and a well-known personality there, declared in May that the floods and other natural disasters that have bedeviled Texas since 1986 are the Lord's retribution for all the attacks on Otwell's character over the years. Said Otwell, "We've been keeping stats on this."

Grudges

Doug Pearson, 47, shot himself to death in Melbourne Beach, Florida, in May after taking a hostage inside the church for which he was building-committee chairman. He was upset that the committee outvoted him to add trim to the copper steeple and to remove the baseboards inside, which he had personally installed.

John Otis Jones, 37, smashed the windows of six police cars in Aurora, Colorado, in March and explained to police when they arrested him that he was still angry at having been wrongfully jailed for 40 days in 1987 due to mistaken identity.

In a front-page editorial last December 7, 48 years after Pearl Harbor, the Everett (Massachusetts) Leader took the time to wish "the Japanese people the greeting of the season and wish them a catastrophic earthquake. They bombed us when most of our fellows were on their knees praying [on a Sunday morning]."

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.